Technologies
SaaS / Applications
Notion is a very easy to use documentation portal that includes structured data. We eagerly await their API.
Secure chat. Easy to integrate. We use this for internal communication and receiving notifications from our systems.
Structured spreadsheet available via an API, AirTable can be the admin editor for data we use in solutions.
With a solid presence in Australia Neto powers many large ecommerce stores thanks to their excellent ebay integration. We integrate with Neto.
Helping people sell things on the internet, Shopify has an impressive depth of capability. We integrate heavily with Shopify.
A strong contender to Slack, Teams does video chat, channels, scheduling and phone calling.
Microsoft have taken the datawarehouse to the masses with PowerBI. Able to run on the Windows Desktop or in the cloud this is a great way to ask questions of data you may already have. We like how it can run equally well from a spreadsheet and enterprise database.
With over 3,000 integrations Zapier connects SaaS services together through event based "recipies".
We integrate heavily with Accredo to extend it's functionality. Accredo handles warehouse management and jobbing with ease. With it's powerful API we transfer millions of records per day.
Databases
A super fast key value store that can use memory or persist to disk. Often used by other systems for caching or event subscriptions.
The ubiquitous open source database. This technology probably powers most of the known web. May mangle your utf8 strings if you don't set the charset and collation correctly.
Arguably the best open source general purpose database (sorry MySQL). Plenty of excellent extensions including GIS.
PouchDB is a library for connecting to CouchDB and also an implementation of the CouchDB protocol inside the browser. Great for browser based editing tools.
This legendary database commands respect. In it’s millionth iteration its rock solid and used by large enterprises everywhere.
A GraphQL native graph database. Dgraph can be used for a simple search index or ramped up into a dynamic schema optional index calculating jugganaut.
Relax, CouchDB is syncing. CouchDB is a document store with a update model that can handle multiple, conflicting versions of the same document. Good for offline sync.
Internet of Things
A standard for electrical communication, RS-485 is used for Modbus communication with one or more devices.
MQTT is a lightweight messaging protocol for publishing and subscribing to events. Often used in IoT equipment.
Low Power Radio Alliance is a group who have defined a protocol that allows a small message (55 bytes) to be transmitted with low power via a modulation technology. This allows some battery powered devices to transmit for years. Great for places where you have no power. Effective range about 5km.
Almost plug and play, WiFi has been part of normal internet useage for decades. Each successively new version increases speed and capacity. Great for places where you have power as WiFi consumes a fair amount of power to transmit and receive. Effective range about 50m.
Grafana is a timeseries dashboarding and monitoring tool. It can be used to explore databases like InfluxDB and graphs can be shared.
A standard for electrical communication, RS-232 is used for serial communication with a single device.
Modbus is one of the original industrial protocols. It runs on two or four wires and can let a single device talk to one or more devices on a bus. It has been converted to TCP and can be used accross a network.
Balena is a service that includes all the tools you'd want to work with a fleet of internet connected devices. This works well to administrate our dashboard Raspberry Pis and other devices in the field.
Code
The original web visualisations framework, D3 introduced many ideas and has inspired our continued analytics development.
Web coding language, JavaScript started fairly wonky but has become a software development movement. As a dynamically typed language JavaScript is becoming available in many environments.
Babel is an excellent transpiling system, taking newer JavaScript and Typescript and turning it into compatible code for the web.
One of the current top web frameworks, Vue 3 is a significant change that includes a composition API that we enjoy using.
The JavaScript engine used in Chrome running on the server, Node.js has become a flexible platform due to it's non-blocking event based io and expansive collection if libraries available through npm.
For databaseless authentication we use a variety of jwt styles. This helps our Netlify frontends communicate securely with our backend APIs.
Bundling assets to deploy to the web, Webpack also runs a development environment where changes are automatically built and available to a web browser.
GitHub is the industry standard source control platform. Securing source code and providing workflows GitHub allows us to develop and track changes.
Hardware
A great group of WiFi and related network devices. Their Access Points are excellent and don't quite (hopefully?) require any sort of cloud access configured.
A range of powerful networking gear. A little hard to configure (this is not for home use) but incredible powerful via RouterOS. Works well with a network topology and testing tool called The Dude, also from MikroTik.
Similar to the Raspberry Pi the LattePanda is a single board computer. It can run Windows and has an Arduino built-in for communicating with electronic devices. Our LattePanda is used for PowerBI and Accredo development.
These folk make a collection of sensor hardware. We've integrated with their flow meters.
A small PC that can plug into the back of a TV. Great for dashboards and a small amount of media use.
Originally designed as a mass produced education device, the humble Raspberry Pi is a complete computer on a single board. Great for running dashboards on TVs or automated IoT systems in the field.
Platform
A content delivery network, Netlify handles static site frontends and makes them fast. 5 second deployments.
A Node.js authentication platform, we use Passport to authenticate Office 365 and several other identity providers.
CapRover gives us the power and flexibility of managing a docker cluster on our own server. With one click apps out of the box we're usually able to setup new systems, services and databases fast. 5 second deployments.
Running most of our servers, DigitalOcean is an excellent hosting provider. They've expanded into more services.
A Node.js queuing platform running on Redis, Bull processes millions of messages for many of our integrations.
A newer web server, Caddy 2 has automatic security certificates and an API built in. We're exploring Caddy 2 as a faster and convenient platform for the future.
Shaping to be the most successful successor to SQL, GraphQL allows frontend systems to selectively add or remove data on a case by case basis.
To provide fault tolerance and distributed locks we use Consul to coordinate configuration and health. HashiCorp are showing everyone how a multi-cloud approach gives us flexibility.
Assisting the progression of automating infrastructure moving to code, Docker is a standardised "container" for software and systems to run.